With the sunset of Classic coming faster than we realize, it’s important to start converting your Classic Configurator now. There are two main reasons:
First, many of us “colored outside the lines” with customizations that weren’t exactly standard in the old Product Configurator. You’ll want plenty of time to develop alternatives if needed.
Second, in my opinion, the Kinetic Configurator is still very buggy. You’ll want to catch and resolve any issues that crop up before you’re forced to move to Kinetic without any choice.
My number one piece of advice:
Export and back up your work as often as possible. The Kinetic Configurator is very unforgiving—and even less helpful if something goes wrong.
The other day, I lost two hours of work because a change triggered the classic “Error” message—no details, no ability to undo, and I had to fall back to my last export from two hours earlier.
Some ongoing issues I’m still seeing:
Combo boxes don’t populate or refresh properly.
Read-only expressions don’t always fire consistently.
Be very cautious with renaming controls: unlike Classic, Kinetic lets you rename controls, but there seems to be a limit. After a while (and not just because of reference issues), renaming a control can trigger unexplained errors. I haven’t identified a clear pattern yet, but it’s something to watch out for.
Finally, make sure to submit any and all issues you encounter to Epicor so they can be logged and (hopefully) resolved.
Additional Piece of advice that I’ve talked about before, make sure to save after you add a control before adding a new control or adding code. First because any code won’t see the control until you do. Second, I just added 12 controls, hit save and it told me control name length limited to 30 characters. I try to be fairly verbose in my naming as it makes things easier to understand later. I had to visit 6 controls to find the one that was over 30.
I will add, if you are doing a multi-page design think through the layout very carefully, AFAIK there is no way to move controls between pages like in Classic.
Make sure that if you have multiple pages that a page does not start with a dynamic combo box, this is the only place I have struggled to get it to load as putting the manual reloading of the combo boxes on the page load/page loaded does not work (in 2024.1 at least), otherwise I’ve never had the manual code to reload boxes not work, it is stupid that Epicor made it so you have to add it but not much we can do about that.
Interpage communication seems to have holes in it. One client has a combo on page one that has a value that is used on another page. The value doesn’t come through when referenced on the other page.
Also page navigation has issues, skipping pages is completely broken.
That is weird, I only have one configurator I can think of that would skip pages based on inputs but it does work as designed. In this case it is page 3 of 3 that is skipped if a check box is false on page 2 and I am 99.9% certain that it worked perfectly from the built-in uplift from classic, I do not recall having to do anything to that part during the uplift.
One additional thing I noticed: If you make any changes to the configurator, it WILL let you Approve the configurator without Publishing in App Studio. It won’t show an error when approving, but it will throw an error whenever you load the configurator while the configurator is approved.
I have the page set to Read Only based on that checkbox. It seems to me there was the ability to skip pages that were read only in the classic configurator but I don’t immediately see where that would be set in a kinetic configurator.
Like I said, this was an uplift from Classic that worked there and appears to be continuing to work in Kinetic.
Excellent point, I’ve gotten in the habit of not approving/un-approving EXCEPT in the designer as you can easily confuse the Designer. My impression is the Applications Studio Designer takes a snapshot of things when it launches so changes OUTSIDE of the designer while Designer is open are ignored. I have seen this with User Defined Methods if changes made using the menu version and not the one built into the configurator. You have to close Designer and reopen it for it to pick up changes. There are some server side methods you can only edit from the menu version so just need to keep this in mind.
I certainly feel your pain. I have worked with the Kinetic Configurator since its first introduction 2 years ago. Believe me when i say things are a lot better now and certainly more stable, but some of the old problems still linger. My advice on things to look out for…
Do not ever ever rename inputs, you could never do this in Classic so why start now, otherwise your configurator may break.
Once you have created a UD method with parameters, don’t try to edit the parameters or the order of the parameters, it seems to screw itself up. Better to delete or rename the existing UD method and then create new.
Ref parameters within UD methods don’t work in Kinetic, I currently refactor UD methods to return a delimited string and separate the values out within the receiving method. Only the Epicor gods know when this will be fixed.
When calling the refresh of a dynamic list from a UD method, note that the refresh only occurs after the client method has completed. Very frustrating as you can no longer read the list and set the list. There is a work around to store your lists locally in an input but this can require some major surgery to existing configurators.
I concur on the regular taking of the configurator backup, although backup and restoring configurators have also been a little problematic.
With regards to skipping pages, i did find a work around to this, from what i recall i used the skip page if all inputs are disabled.
If you’re not copying and pasting your code into an expression editor panel from an external editor, be VERY careful of where your mouse is when you click in the configurator window… you never ever ever ever ever want to accidentally click outside the expression editor panel before you hit OK!
Configurator Rules Test Results screen often just doesn’t work. Also, you may have to expand and collapse the tree nodes in the rule entry window several times before you can see your MOM correctly.
Text area fields - Guess what, you can’t set the default number of visible rows in configurators like you can in a dashboard, application layer, etc. You just can’t do it. If you want to use a text area field, your users will need to resize it every time.
– If you’re not used to Application Studio, don’t plan on finding help in the guides available from Epicor. Plenty of other things have a ton of properties and functionality missing in configurators, too. I’m sure there’s reasons for some of those, but the text area field thing makes absolutely no sense to me!
Application Studio has a habit of not actually deleting things (“things” being events and even pages), by which I mean they will either reappear the next time you open your configurator and/or references to deleted things do not properly get cleaned up, causing errors from which there is no escape aside from restoring a previous version of your configurator or manually clearing out the source(s) of the problem from the .jsonc file in an export.
– If you add code to an event, especially like an on field validating or on loaded event, and then change your mind. Too bad. Your configurator will very likely continue expecting an event here. Delete the event itself all you want; it’ll keep reappearing.
– I have added a page, done nothing with it, and changed my mind only to find I needed to restore from a backup later on.
There is a bad UI decision regarding field events… From this image, you’d assume the On Field Changed event must have some code behind it, yes?
You’d be wrong! As soon as you save after adding an input, the symbol next to the on changed event becomes an ellipsis. On validating events retain their plus symbol until you add code, however. Just don’t add code and then change your mind (see #4).
Do you ever add assemblies to your methods? Get ready for a whole lot of even worse UI decisions.
This window is not actually broken:
Once you select the directory, you have to use the search field to load in the assemblies list. Go get yourself a snack or something once you do; you’re going to be waiting a minute.
When you’ve made some selections and you’re ready to actually add them, you need to click save. You may have already noticed a problem here:
Save your selections with the blue floppy on the grid card, then save the selections and any using clauses with the outlined floppy at the top of the panel.
Honestly, if you pulled the version of me that didn’t know about configurators yet out of the past and made me learn from scratch in Kinetic, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to.
I think these facts nicely sum up the reality of learning Kinetic configurators:
The latest version of the configurator technical reference (2024.1), is still written for classic configurators. Open it up and search the word “studio” for a bit of a chuckle.
Nearly every example in the technical reference points you to a “Wavy Rider in Action” section for more information. That section does not exist. It has not existed in any edition of the configurator technical reference since 10.1.500 (July, 2016).
The learning center’s advanced “Hands On” lesson for the configurator still starts out with creating a classic configurator and pasting all the inputs into the designer input list.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a total beginner. Your major source of information, the technical reference, is still totally focused on classic UI. “Well, no problem,” you say to yourself… after all, there are how many guides for various aspects of Application Studio? You’ll just use those.
OK, now, not only are you flipping around through like 6 separate reference files between the app studio ones and the configurator guide + tech. reference, but SO MUCH of what’s in the application studio manuals plain old does. not. work. for. configurators, and this fact is mentioned exactly nowhere.
I’d be having an aneurysm if I didn’t already do this for a living!
Wow I never realized it was this bad. I’ve done many classic configurators but haven’t tried kinetic yet. We are moving to CPQ instead, which has its own challenges, but sounds less painful than this.
